James Grippando - Money to Burn

Girelli’s hair was soaked with gel, the right side of his face completely covered.

“This gel sticks to your skin,” said Burn, “and you can’t get it off. It just keeps burning and burning, hotter and hotter.”

“Okay, okay!” Girelli shouted. “It was her!”

Burn dropped the stick onto the concrete floor and set the can aside. “That’s a problem, Tony. Because you were supposed to get rid of her four years ago.”

Wald said, “He told us he did get rid of her.”

Burn pulled a stick match from his pocket.

“Don’t burn me!” Girelli shouted.

Burn struck the match, but he held it away from the gel. “Why’d you lie to us, Tony?”

Girelli’s voice raced with fear. “I thought she was dead! I really did!”

Wald said, “You told us you shot her. You said you took her from the sailboat, did the job, and fed her to the sharks.”

“She was dead!” Girelli shouted. “That’s all that mattered. You wanted her dead so-”

“So you told us what we wanted to hear,” said Wald.

Burn dropped the match. It fell onto the glob on the floor, igniting it instantly. The fire produced a black, noxious smoke. Above them was a huge overhead fan that normally sucked out car exhaust. One of Wald’s thugs switched it on to keep them all from suffocating.

“Why did you lie?” asked Burn.

“I thought she was dead, I really did.”

“Did you work with her? Did you help fake her death and let her run?”

“No, no! I swear, I thought the bitch was dead. I just needed the money, and the only way to collect my fee was to say I shot her before the shark got her.”

The homemade napalm continued to burn near Girelli’s feet. It was close enough to make him sweat, and he was peering out nervously with the eye that wasn’t covered in goo.

“Tony, Tony,” said Burn, shaking his head. “What are we gonna do with you?”

“Get this shit out of my eyes. It’s killing me! Please, just give me another chance!”

“Hey, now there’s an idea,” said Burn.

“Yeah,” Wald joined in. “We let Tony live if he does the job right this time.”

“I’ll do it for free,” said Girelli. “Just don’t burn me, dude.”

“Brilliant,” said Burn, and then he glanced at Wald. “Why don’t you and your buddies beat it so Tony and I can work out the details.”

Wald smiled as he reached for his car keys and climbed into his Lamborghini. The garage door opened, and he pulled out. Three other men walked out after the car, and the door closed automatically again.

Burn watched the fire at Girelli’s feet, which had grown hotter with the shot of fresh air.

“I can do this right,” said Girelli. “No bullshit this time.”

“I’m thinking about it,” said Burn.

“Just let me live, and I will get the job done. I swear I will. She’ll wish I had done her four years ago.”

“Unfortunately, the decision is not up to me. But I can get an answer pretty quickly.”

Burn pulled a sealed envelope from inside his coat pocket. It was a delivery package that opened with a zip tab-just like the one he’d sent to Michael Cantella.

“Open your mouth,” said Burn.

Girelli hesitated, then complied.

“Bite down,” said Burn as he placed the envelope between Girelli’s teeth.

His mouth closed with obvious reluctance, but he had no choice. The envelope was firmly in place. The thick gel continued to run down Girelli’s face and gathered on the flat side of the envelope.

“Now,” said Burn as he reached for the tab, “let’s see what the boss man thinks of your smart idea.”

“IT’S OVER,” SAID ERIC.

It was after nine P.M., just the two of us in the first-floor study of his Tudor-style mansion in Rye, New York. I say Rye, but the Haute Living feature story said that the ten-acre estate actually spanned three towns and had five addresses, putting his annual property tax bill somewhere north of $300,000-all worth it, no doubt, if you and your wife needed nine bedrooms, twelve bathrooms, two swimming pools, a clay tennis court, a putting green modeled after the famous twelfth hole at Augusta, a collection of beehives, and three large paddocks. Throw in a river running through the wooded backyard and a trout-stocked private lake, and life had to be good. Most of the time.

Eric was standing at the credenza between a pair of Tiffany lamps, pouring himself a scotch on the rocks. I was seated on the camelback couch.

“Over?” I said.

I’d driven there thinking I had some explaining to do about my arrest at Rockefeller Center, never thinking that it would be “over” before I even started talking. I almost didn’t care; it seemed almost certain that Ivy was alive-and nothing mattered more. “It was all a misunderstanding,” I said. “You can’t fire me for that.”

He turned and shook his head. “I meant us-the whole firm.”

His voice shook, and as he laid his hand atop his favorite Remington bronze, I caught a glimpse of his face in the unflattering light of a halogen spot that was intended to illuminate the sculpture. In the past three days, he had aged ten years. He took a long drink, then went to the framed memento on the cherry-paneled wall: his very first paycheck from his days as a broker with Saxton Silvers, which he pointed out every time I came over. It was flanked on one side by the first bottle of wine produced by the vineyard he owned in Napa Valley and on the other side by a Forbes article about WhiteSands, the investment management firm he’d founded and taken public to the tune of a nine-figure personal profit.

The check was for two weeks’ pay: six hundred dollars.

“This firm survived the Civil War,” he said, “two world wars, the Great Depression, a currency crisis, and the destruction of our headquarters on nine/eleven. Two members of the Silvers family even survived Auschwitz. And now it’s over.”

“What do you mean over?”

“There will be no bailout from the Fed,” he said. “The short sellers won: Saxton Silvers is filing for bankruptcy tomorrow morning.”

“But you said the deadline was Sunday.”

“That was when we had merger talks going with the Bank of New World. Those broke down this morning. I’ve been speed-dialing Louis Kendahl all day. That prick wouldn’t even take my calls.”

Kendahl was the CEO of New World, the largest commercial bank in the country.

“I even tried him at home,” said Eric. “The machine picked up three times, and on the fourth his wife answered. I stressed how important it was. Do you know what she told me? She said: ‘If Louis wanted to speak with you, he would have called you back.’”

Ouch, I thought.

Eric walked across his study, leaned on the edge of his desk, and looked around. “Damn,” he said, the exquisite furnishings of home apparently having triggered a work-related thought. “I can’t believe I just spent a million one renovating the executive suite.”

My sentiment exactly-even before the subprime shit had hit the fan.

“A lot of good memories,” he said, his gaze drifting back toward the Saxton Silvers paycheck on the wall. “All of them good, really. Except one.”

He was looking at me now, and of course he meant the outing in the Bahamas, where Ivy disappeared.

“All but one,” I agreed.

“I should never have let-”

“Don’t go there,” I said. There was no need for anyone to start taking the blame now. “You didn’t let Ivy and me go off on our own. We just went.”

He poured himself another scotch. “Do you ever wonder if she…”

I waited, hanging on his open thought. I wondered if he had intuited-or heard-something.

“If she’s alive?” I said, finishing for him.